


Falling For You Was My Mistake

by hopeinyourheart



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, S.S.C. Napoli, alot of feelings, lorenzo is a pup, of course, what else would it be this is me at the end of the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 14:59:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14696571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeinyourheart/pseuds/hopeinyourheart
Summary: The pain sits in Lorenzo's chest for hours. For so long after that the walls of his house start closing in on him so he drives to the top of city. It's quiet and cold. He gets out of the car and stands on the edge of cliff overlooking the sea.





	Falling For You Was My Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> for the word prompt

 

 _Tell me I am a premature burial;_    
_Tell me existing feels like being buried alive sometimes;_    
_& it’s okay to feel that way;_  

Football is magic.  

 

It's life. Lorenzo grows up with a ball at his feet, spending hours on the streets while the sun burnt down on the back of his neck, turning beet red; later he gets scolded for rushing out of the house without applying sunscreen.  

 

Through the wind and rain there was always a ball at his feet.  

 

It was natural. A piece of him; almost like he was born with it.  

 

Naples is home. Naples is beautiful. He spends hours on the street playing football because it was his life but he loves his home. He runs through the back streets of his city, skips past the shops, and memorises all the faces. 

 

He doesn’t think he'd ever leave Naples.  

 

Lorenzo grows up and people leave, people come and go and no one ever really stays but Napoli invites him in with wide arms and a sea of blue support. Napoli doesn’t take the ball away, it feeds his hunger to learn and his thirst to become better. Always better.  

 

Because this was Napoli and Naples was home.  

 

Home was football and Naples is a huge part of his heart. Italy by extension is also who he is but being Italian without football was worse than leaving Naples. Meaningless. A nationality with no identity. A religion that wasn’t football.  

 

The club raises him like a third parent. Coaches and trainers forever concerned with his progress; with his health. Sometimes Lorenzo thinks they are more demanding and over bearing than his mother but then he walks down the street and sees other kids wearing Napoli shirts, idols adorning their backs and he wants that.  

 

Wants his name sprawled over the Neapolitan streets.  

 

Napoli loans him out to Pescara for a while and he tries not to let it bother him because this was his chance and they'd take him back. They had to.  

 

He forms a strike partnership with Ciro. It's so easy. It's as easy as lacing up his boots, as easy as downing a bottle of water, as easy as the sun rising. Ciro points at him after he scores, smile wide and blinding. Lorenzo smiles back as Ciro jumps into his arms and screams in triumph.  

 

Lorenzo thinks he might be in love with him but maybe he isn't because Ciro wasn’t football and football was home. Ciro didn’t feel like home, but he had a smile that made Lorenzo's heart jump. Maybe it was because he scored the goals and Lorenzo loved winning,  

 

Napoli calls him back at the end of the season and Ciro goes to Genoa.  

 

He finds it hard to find a starting position, pushed back behind everyone else. It frustrates him. Lorenzo's mother asks him if he want to join another club already knowing the answer. She nods her head and tells him his chance will come soon enough.  

 

The first season back at Napoli ends with Lorenzo mostly being a substitute.  

 

Dries joins Napoli that summer. Another forward for Lorenzo to compete with. To fight for his place with. Another forward that thinks they're better than him while Lorenzo's soul bleeds for Napoli on the bench.  

 

Dries doesn’t even know Napoli. Not like he does, he didn’t grow up loving it, he doesn’t know the streets or the people or the places to visit. No one loved this place more than Lorenzo and when he does get a starting position next to Dries in the game he pushes his envy to the back of his mind and sends a bright shining smile to the fans before kickoff.  

 

The game goes well.  

 

Lorenzo runs down the left flank, Dries runs with him like a shadow with no other freedom but to follow the man with no other history but Naples and football. It belongs to Lorenzo and Dries knows his next move even before he does; jolting into the box so he can meet his pass with a touch of his boot, sending it ricocheting into the back of the net like it was as easy as waking up.  

 

Dries celebrates by running into his arms, jumping on him in congratulations and thanks. Lorenzo can't help but bring his arms up to steady the weight feeling Dries' muscles move under his palms, feels him yell and see his smile.  

 

Lorenzo hugs him and Dries pats his back walking back to the centre circle. It felt right. Normal.   

 

Somewhere along the line the envy turns into admiration, turns into friendship. Lorenzo drives Dries around Napoli, shows him where to eat, teaches him Italian in small broken half English. Dries sometimes utters words in Belgium forgetting where they were and it'd take him a confused second to realize where he was before translating. Lorenzo loved those moments, where they were both lost and content in their own space. 

Lorenzo plays regularly. He becomes Napoli's hero. Linking up with Dries is like breathing. Inevitable. Routine.  

 

Napoli sells his shirt. Neapolitan streets fill with 'Insigne 24'. He smiles from ear to ear the first time he sees a child wearing his shirt.  

 

The streets also fill with 'Mertens 14'. Lorenzo doesn’t understand the feeling in his chest until later. He jots it down as jealously even though it doesn’t feel like it. He likes that the streets are also filling up with Dries' name, their names.  

 

Dries and Lorenzo 

 

Mertens and insigne  

 

Later he learns it's pride.  

 

Later than that he learns it might be love.  

 

*

 

Ciro smiles at him at the Italy NT meetup. Lorenzo and Ciro partner up for the warm ups, his hands-on Lorenzo's arms as he stretches, on his legs as he helps him stretch. Their warm and heavy. Ciro smiles at him again, invites Lorenzo up to his room for FIFA or a movie.  

 

Lorenzo complies.  

 

Dries texts him half way through trashing Ciro 6-0. The light illuminates his face but his smile is bright enough already.  

 

"What you smiling at?" Ciro asks, all his unwavering focus on Lorenzo now. Dries sent him a picture of his feet with the caption ' _bored.'_

 

"Nothing," Lorenzo mumbles as an afterthought.  

 

Ciro pokes him in the ribs, "cheating on me," he asks giggling.  

 

Lorenzo looks up and giggles too. "Yep," he tells him before writing out  _'I'm destroying Ciro on FIFA.'_

 

Dries asks,  _'what's the score.'_

 

"Tell me," Ciro asks attempting to tickle him, which ends with Lorenzo on the floor out of breath t-shirt half ridden up his body. Lorenzo looks at Ciro and then at his phone about to write out a reply when Ciro snatches his phone.  

 

"Mertens!" he exclaims. "Why've you got a huge ass smile on your face for Mertens," he asks scrolling through the messages because apparently he wasn’t taught personal space or that snooping was rude.  

 

"You two are tied at the hip, can't he leave you alone for two seconds?" he asks still scrolling. 

 

"Give it back," Lorenzo demands reaching for his phone.  

 

Ciro does. "You like him, don’t you?" He asks.  

 

Lorenzo doesn’t respond as he picks up the controller again. He also don’t see the heartbroken expression on Ciro's face.  

 

But if he did he wouldn’t be sorry enough because he thought he loved Ciro, he really did, but his touch didn’t burn and his touch wasn’t happiness. Ciro was love because Lorenzo hadn't learnt how to separate romantic love from football love, the lines were blurred but Dries had cleared them. 

 

Lorenzo thought he loved Ciro but there was a difference in thinking and knowing and he knows now. He knows when he jumps into Dries' arms after a goal, he knows when Dries hands him a bottle of water, he knows when Dries is on his couch eating his food, he just knows, the same way he knows football.  

 

Ciro is youthful ignorance. The impulse of wrong and of right. The youthful nature of living on the edge of not knowing what to do but still living life to the fullest.  

 

Dries was... Dries is... Dries is Dries. And he doesn’t have to think anything at all. Because he's like air, free and open. 

 

*

 

Napoli suffers a five-nil defeat. 

 

The pain sits in Lorenzo's chest for hours. For so long after that the walls of his house start closing in on him so he drives to the top of city. It's quiet and cold. He gets out of the car and stands on the edge of cliff overlooking the sea. 

 

He feels like he can see every single of inch of the city. Of the water and the sand. Every inch of disappointment he caused.  

 

It feels like he's standing on the edge of the world  

 

Dries finds him.  

 

"You ok," he asks. He's the only one who'd know Lorenzo would be here because he showed him when he took Dries around Naples for the sixth time. His figure in the passenger seat while the wind blew through the window, tousling the tufts of his hair. Lorenzo wants him to love Naples the way he himself did it. In a weird way it would be like he loved him.  

 

Lorenzo looks down at the water sloshing below, the slow movement of it, a player in red flied past him, the water hits the rocks slowly, the ball thumps into the back of the net, the waves rock against the shore calmly, the wrong colours cheer and scream and yell and run, the waves revert back to the sea as slowly as they moved forward.  

 

Lorenzo sits down on the dusty ground. Dries sits beside him. A shadow. Still his shadow. An extension of him just like a football.  

 

"Are you ok," Lorenzo asks instead. The sky is clear. No stars, the moon hidden behind a dozen clouds. Nothing but acres of clear sky and strong breeze.  

 

He doesn’t say anything. It's enough of a response.  

 

It feels like the magic had run out, in its wake the destruction of what could have been.  

 

Lorenzo tilts sideways and puts his head on Dries shoulder, lets the heat of Dries' body warm his cold cheek. It’s the only thing that feels real.  

 

"I love this city," Lorenzo breathes into the air.  

 

"It's beautiful," Dries says. He said that a lot when Lorenzo drove him around. Maybe he said it to please him. Maybe it was meaningless. Maybe he liked the city enough on his own.  

 

Maybe that included Lorenzo too. 

 

"Yeah," Lorenzo breathes shuffling closer. "I never want to leave," when he speaks, his breath clouds in the air, visible, gone in a second. "It's my home, it's......., it hurts," he says into Dries neck. "I want to be their hero."  

 

"You are," Dries says. Lorenzo scoffs. "These people love you as much as you love them," Dries tells him.  

 

Lorenzo contemplates that, it was possible, maybe the city gave him the gift of the peoples love but it took Napoli's success and replaced it with misery in exchange.  

 

Dries is warm and a constant by his side. Always by his side, there to collect the ball, to reach his pass, to assist, to score, to lean on. Dries was more than Napoli, more than football. Lorenzo doesn’t love him because he's connected to Naples, because he isn't. Dries isn't Italian, he isn't Neapolitan, he didn’t care to live in this city or play for this club for longer than he wanted. He doesn’t love him because he scores a goal from his pass. Lorenzo doesn’t love him because of football. He knows that now.  

 

Lorenzo sees his hand resting on his knee and starts fiddling with a ring on his index finger.  

 

"I'm with someone," he says the same time Lorenzo says "I love you."  

 

The breath in his chest rattles around his ribcage for a while, his ears ring and his stomach cramps up. Lorenzo's face is still resting against Dries' neck.  

 

He pulls away. Dries puts a hand on Lorenzo's shoulder. His touch still burns.  

 

In this moment existing feels like a burden. Breathing feels like there's been a ton of bricks placed on his chest so his oxygen has been cut off.  

 

Dries shuffles closer. "I thought you liked Ciro," he says instead. Lorenzo turns his head so fast it leaves him feeling dizzy. 

 

"He's a friend," he says breathlessly. Hopeful, youthful and stupid. Maybe thinking he was in love with Ciro wasn’t so bad after all because this felt like he was being buried alive.   

 

Dries nods. "Maybe in another life huh Insigne." He says with a smile and a lilt in his voice like he was joking, and it was meant to be a joke he knows that. But the look in Dries' eyes says something different. Like he means it. Like it wasn’t meant to be a joke at all.  

 

Lorenzo nods. "Maybe in another life Mertens," he manages to croak out past the bricks. 

 

In another life Lorenzo reaches over with a hand on Dries' chest and he presses his lips against Dries', slots his tongue against Dries' and pulls at his lips. In this life Lorenzo sits beside Dries and memorises the outline of Dries' features and the sound of his voice around his name.   

 

The envy returns. This time it isn't about a starting position, or how he was taking Lorenzo's place. This time it's because life was cruel, because Lorenzo fit by Dries' side like a puzzle piece; perfect and meant to be. Because there was someone else, because Dries is more...just more.  

 

The waves crash against the bottom of the cliff. The starless sky sends a harsh wind to sting his cheeks. Lorenzo sits by his side and wonders if existing should feel like dying. 

 

Naples is silent. And beautiful.  

 

Napoli was blue and Lorenzo felt broken.  

**Author's Note:**

> if you dont know about lorenzo and dries you really should, they spend 90% of their time with their faces buried in each others neck, also all the neck kisses in the land, all the time, in the tunnels, on the pitch, just randomly, they are both smol and adorable and i had to hurt them cus im evil  
> anyway thanks for reading, pls feel free to yell at me xx


End file.
